The Myanmar government opened the third round of its key peace talks on Wednesday in the latest attempt to make headway with its goal of forging lasting peace in the country after seven decades of armed conflict and strained relations with ethnic minority groups.

Humanitarian aid sent by Malaysia for refugees in Myanmar’s beleaguered Rakhine state arrived in the state capital on Tuesday and will be distributed to both ethnic Rakhine people and Rohingya Muslims in three townships.

Malaysia has delivered hundreds of tons of food and other necessities, including rice, instant noodles, clothing, shoes, and hygiene kits, via the ship Nautical Aliya which arrived in Thilawa Port in Yangon region last week.

Myanmar’s foreign affairs ministry said on Thursday the government will conduct an investigation of the crisis in Rakhine state following accusations by the United Nations that security forces committed serious human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims who live there.

Based on interviews with more than 200 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, the U.N. report issued on Feb. 3 said the military’s actions “very likely amounted to ethnic cleansing,” though Myanmar's government and military have largely dismissed allegations of abuse against the Muslim minority.

A third Muslim man whom the Myanmar government said had worked closely with local administrative officials in restive northern Rakhine state has been found dead in violence-ridden Maungdaw township, the State Counselor’s Office announced on Wednesday.

Authorities are investigating the murder of the man who was a former ward administrator in Badakar village and had been working with local authorities on regional development activities, the announcement said.

Myanmar’s Rakhine state parliament criticized state government leaders on Wednesday for not showing up to discuss an investigation commission’s report on deadly border guard station attacks in October and subsequent violence in the northern part of the state.

The state-level investigation commission submitted a report to Rakhine lawmakers on Tuesday, saying that the October attack and ensuing clashes were planned by Muslim militants who wanted to occupy Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Rathedaung townships, where many of the country’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority group live.

Myanmar authorities in the Rakhine state capital Sittwe on Thursday relocated about 1,000 people displaced by violence in Maungdaw township to the municipality’s main soccer field, while 100 others returned to their homes in three villages.

Members of Myanmar’s Rakhine advisory commission met with national government ministers on Wednesday in Naypyidaw to discuss the security situation in Maungdaw township, where recent violence has forced thousands to flee their homes.

The northern part of Rakhine state where Maungdaw is located has been placed under military control following a deadly Oct. 9 attack on three border guard posts and ensuing hostilities that authorities have blamed on insurgents linked to Aqa Mul Mujahidin, an Islamic organization active in Muslim-majority Maungdaw.

At least 55 have died in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which has borne the brunt of torrential monsoon rains and subsequent floods, and remains in need of more relief aid as it prepares to rebuild, the region’s chief minister said Thursday.

Nationwide, 88 people have perished in the floods, according to the latest figures from the country’s Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement.

Most of those who perished in Rakhine died when their boats capsized, the state’s chief minister Maung Maung Ohn told RFA’s Myanmar Service, although waters have now receded.

Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan are preventing food supplies from reaching refugee camps packed with ethnic Kokang civilians fleeing the fighting across the border in Myanmar between government troops and rebel forces, local sources told RFA on Tuesday.

The blockade has sparked a crisis in some camps, where food is already running out, as well as the deaths of two people who were unable to seek emergency medical help, refugees and volunteers said.